Home > Prominent Filipino American Businesswoman/Philanthropist, Head of Major California Education Organization & former INS Commissioner Appointed to MPI Board of Trustees

Press Release

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Prominent Filipino American Businesswoman/Philanthropist, Head of Major California Education Organization & former INS Commissioner Appointed to MPI Board of Trustees

WASHINGTON — Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), announced today that Loida Nicolas Lewis, Chair and CEO of the investment firm TLC Beatrice, LLC, veteran non-profit leader and journalist Louis Freedberg and former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James W. Ziglar have joined the Board of Trustees of MPI, an independent, non-partisan think tank dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide.

Mrs. Lewis, a former general attorney in the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, assumed leadership of the TLC Beatrice Foods business conglomerate after the death of her husband, noted African-American lawyer and entrepreneur Reginald F. Lewis, in 1993. Two years later, after steering the company to $2 billion in revenue, she was named the most powerful female CEO in America by Working Woman magazine. A native of the Philippines, she is chair emeritus of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), which she helped found. Mrs. Lewis is a co-founder of the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund (AALDEF), chair of the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation and founder and president of The Lewis College in the Philippines.

Dr. Freedberg is executive director of EdSource, a non-profit organization founded in 1977 that provides research and data on key education challenges in California and nationally. He was previously the founding director of California Watch, an innovative non-profit journalism venture. He spent more than a decade at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he was an award-winning reporter, Washington correspondent, columnist and member of the editorial board with a focus on immigration and education policies. Dr. Freedberg also directed youth programs at Pacific News Service/New America Media. A native of South Africa, he founded and directed the Institute for a New South Africa. He has been a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University, a visiting fellow at the Urban Institute and a fellow at the Institute for Justice and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Former INS Commissioner Ziglar, who is an MPI senior fellow, previously served as an advisor to the MPI Board of Trustees. Prior to joining MPI, Mr. Ziglar was president and CEO of Cross Match Technologies. From 1998-2001, he served as Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate, a position in which he served as the Senate's chief operating officer, top protocol officer and chief law enforcement officer. He left that post in 2001 when President George W. Bush appointed him INS Commissioner, a position he held until December 2002 when the agency was dissolved and its missions transferred to the new Department of Homeland Security. He has more than 40 years of experience in management, finance, law and public policy, spending 17 years as an investment banker and 13 years as a practicing lawyer. He began his law career as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.

"We are delighted and honored that Loida Nicolas Lewis, Louis Freedberg and Jim Ziglar have joined the MPI board, and welcome the unique perspectives they bring to the Institute with their impressive backgrounds in business, philanthropy, journalism, non-profit leadership and administration of federal immigration functions," said MPI President Demetrios G. Papademetriou.

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The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, DC dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international levels. For more on MPI, visit www.migrationpolicy.org.